The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate

Transcription

1 JLEO, V21 N1 1 The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate Edward L. Glaeser Harvard University and NBER Andrei Shleifer Harvard University and NBER James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and show that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence. 1. Introduction Early in World War I, a wounded British officer arrived in Boston to recruit citizens of the then-neutral United States to fight in the British army. He politely asked the by then legendary Irish mayor of Boston, James Michael Curley, for permission. Curley replied, Go ahead Colonel. Take every damn one of them. This statement captures Curley s lifelong hostility to the Anglo- Saxons of Boston, whom he described as a strange and stupid race, and his clear wish that they just leave. Throughout his four terms, using a combination of aggressive redistribution and incendiary rhetoric, Curley tried to transform Boston from an integrated city of poor Irish and rich protestants into a Gaelic city on American shores. Curley s motivation is clear. In his six mayoral races between 1913 and 1951, he represented the poorest and most ethnically distinct of Boston s Irish. The city s Brahmins despised him because of his policies, his corruption, and his rhetoric, and always worked to block his victory. Curley s expected share of Boston s vote was, to a first approximation, strictly increasing in the share of We are grateful to the National Science Foundation and the Gildor Foundation for financial support, to Alberto Alesina, Elhanan Helpman, Caroline Hoxby, Lawrence Katz, James Robinson, Ken Shepsle, Daniel Treisman, the editor, and three referees of this journal for helpful comments, and to Jesse Shapiro and Andrei Goureev for research assistance. The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, Vol. 21, No. 1, doi: /jleo/ewi001 Ó The Author Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please

2 2 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V21 N1 poor Irish among the Bostonians. Unsurprisingly, he tried to turn Boston into a city that would elect him. We call this strategy increasing the relative size of one s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies the Curley effect. But it is hardly unique to Curley. Other American mayors, but also politicians around the world, have pursued policies that encouraged emigration of their political enemies, raising poverty but gaining political advantage. In his 24 years as mayor, Detroit s Coleman Young drove white residents and businesses out of the city. Under Young, Detroit has become not merely an American city that happens to have a black majority, but a black metropolis, the first major Third World city in the United States. The trappings are all there showcase projects, black-fisted symbols, an external enemy, and the cult of personality (Chafets, 1991:177). Zimbabwe s President Robert Mugabe abused white farmers after his country s independence, openly encouraging their emigration even at a huge cost to the economy. The Curley effect turns traditional views about the requirements for good government on their head. Writers like Olson (1993) argue that sufficiently forward-looking leaders would avoid policies that harm their electorate. But the Curley effect relies critically on forward-looking leaders: when it operates, longer time horizons raise the attraction of socially costly political conduct. Others follow Tiebout (1956) in arguing that large response elasticities to bad policies serve to limit them: the fiscal discipline that is forced upon these units [local governments] emerges from the mobility of resources across subordinate governmental boundaries within the inclusive territorial jurisdiction (Brennan and Buchanan, 1980:178). With the Curley effect, in contrast, large response elasticities make bad policies more, not less, attractive to incumbents. In this article we formalize the Curley effect. By differentially taxing different groups of voters, the incumbent leader can encourage emigration of one of the groups, and maximize the share of the voters who support him. While benefiting the incumbent, these taxes may actually impoverish the area and make both groups worse off. We assume that the incumbent has an innate appeal to the lower-status group. This appeal results from ethnic or class identity, and is one determinant of the voting decision. Our model differs from that of Alesina, Baqir, and Easterly (1999), who focus on the variations in the preferences for public goods across ethnicities but do not consider changes in the electorate. Our model also follows the work on inefficient redistribution through public employment and other means (e.g., Clark and Ferguson, 1983; Alesina and Rodrik, 1994; Persson and Tabellini, 1994; Shleifer and Vishny, 1994; Coate and Morris, 1995; Alesina, Bagir, and Easterly 2000; Robinson and Verdier, 2002). More generally, our work relates to the large body of research on inefficient but politically motivated public policies (e.g., Barro, 1973; Aghion and Bolton, 1990; Persson and Svensson, 1989; Besley and Coate, 1998). Our innovation is the idea that such wasteful redistribution and other public policies shape the electorate by influencing the migration decision.

3 The Curley Effect 3 2. A Model In this section we formalize the basic elements of the Curley effect in a general voting model. In Sections 3 and 4, we apply this model to emigration. 1 We consider the case with two groups, or classes, or ethnicities in the jurisdiction, and all voters as well as the incumbent belonging to one or the other. The leader chooses how much to redistribute from the disfavored to the favored group. Denote the tax that he imposes on each member of the disfavored group by q, where q is the same for each member of that group. Here q equals zero when there is no redistribution, and is positive when the leader favors his own group. Note that q can also be interpreted as a bias in the provision of public services toward the favored group. Our main question is whether the leader chooses q. 0 as opposed to q ¼ 0. The benefit of this redistribution to the leader s group is also a function of the ratio of the number of voters in the competing group to the number of voters in his own group. We denote this ratio by p: If each member of the other group is taxed q, then each member of the leader s group receives spq; where s, 1 is a parameter that captures the waste associated with redistribution. In this model, redistribution is always inefficient: it makes the community as a whole worse off because it wastes resources. Leaders influence the composition of the electorate as people migrate in response to the choice of q. We assume in this section that the value of p is falling with q, and later formally model how migration alters the shape of the electorate The Voting Process We use a simple voting framework: the incumbent maximizes the share of the electorate that supports him against a potential challenger. In our working paper (Glaeser and Shleifer, 2002), we examine a more complex model where the incumbent is assumed to maximize the likelihood of winning the election (see Aranson, Hinich, and Ordeshook, 1974), and obtain very similar results. There are two central elements of our voting framework. First, voters care about the ethnic or class identity of the candidates (see Verba, Ahmed, and Bhatt, 1971; Akerlof and Kranton, 2000). This reflects the prospective feature of voting, since the identity of a candidate predicts his future policies. Second, the politician s past policies influence voters as well. This is a retrospective feature of the voting decision (Fiorina, 1981; Alesina and Rosenthal, 1995). Voters preferences for the incumbent depend on three components: group membership, past policies, and idiosyncratic support for the candidate. The 1. In our working paper (Glaeser and Shleifer, 2002), we also consider the case of social mobility. The two groups are social classes, each associated with a political party, and the policy in question is the education or indoctrination of one class aiming to prevent the political rather than the physical migration of that class to the other party. We argue that some of the policies of the Labour party in the United Kingdom aimed to discourage college education so as to prevent the shift of the working class to the Conservative party.

4 4 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V21 N1 idiosyncratic component of voter preferences is captured by assuming that each voter receives utility j from supporting the incumbent against the opponent, where j is symmetrically distributed around zero with density f(j) and cumulative distribution F(j), where f(.) is single-peaked and converges to zero as j goes to positive or negative infinity. The group membership component of voter preferences is captured by assuming that voters also get utility from the leader s group (ethnicity or class) membership and policies. If a leader from the voter s own group is elected, the voter receives utility of v 0 =2: If a leader from the other group is elected, the voter receives utility of ÿv 0 =2: These preferences are independent of past policies and are best thought of as representing a pure taste for one s own ethnicity or class. Finally, individual preferences respond to the incumbent s past policies. In particular, members of the leader s own group get utility of v 1 ðspqþ if he is reelected, where v 1 ð0þ ¼0 and v# 1 ð:þ. 0: Members of the other group get utility of ÿv 1 ðqþ if the incumbent is reelected. The influence of past policies can be thought of as retrospective voting, as government patronage to buy votes, or as a measure of consistency of policies over time. Policies determine the outcome of the election in two ways. First, q has a direct effect coming through the tastes of the two groups. Second, q influences the composition of the electorate. When the incumbent faces an opponent from the other group, members of his own group support him when j þ v 0 þ v 1 ðspðqþqþ. 0 and thus his share of votes from his own group is 1 ÿ Fðÿv 0 ÿ v 1 ðspðqþqþþ: Members of the other group vote for him when j ÿ v 0 þ v 1 ðÿqþ. 0; so his share of their votes is 1 ÿ Fðv 0 ÿ v 1 ðÿqþþ: The incumbent s total share of votes is 1 ÿðfðÿv 0 ÿ v 1 ðspðqþqþþ þ pðqþfðv 0 ÿ v 1 ðÿqþþþ=ð1 þ pðqþþ: When the incumbent faces an opponent from his own group, its members vote for him when j þ v 1 ðspðqþqþ > 0 and his share of their votes is 1 ÿ Fðÿv 1 ðspðqþqþþ: Members of the other group vote for him when j þðv 1 ðÿqþþ > 0 and his share of their votes is 1 ÿ Gðÿv 1 ðÿqþþ. The share of votes that the incumbent receives when facing an opponent from his own group is 1 ÿðfðÿv 1 ðspðqþqþþ þ pðqþfðÿv 1 ðÿqþþþ=ð1 þ pðqþþ: We assume that the opponent comes from the leader s own group with a fixed 2 probability p, and from the other group with probability 1 - p. The incumbent s expected share of votes then equals PðqÞ ¼1 ÿ ð1 ÿ pþfðÿv 0 ÿ v 1 ðspðqþqþþ þ pfðÿv 1 ðspðqþqþþ 1 þ pðqþ ÿ pðqþ ð1 ÿ pþfðv 0 ÿ v 1 ðÿqþþ þ pfðÿv 1 ðÿqþþ : ð1þ 1 þ pðqþ 2. We have also considered a case in which p is itself determined by the composition of the electorate. It yields qualitatively similar results.

5 The Curley Effect 5 Differentiating Equation (1) with respect to q, and using the fact that f(x) ¼ f(ÿx) (from symmetry), yields p#ð0þð1 ÿ pþ P#ð0Þ ¼ÿ ð1 þ pð0þþ 2 ðfðv 0ÞÿFðÿv 0 ÞÞ ÿ pð0þv# 1ð0Þ 1 þ pð0þ ð1 ÿ sþðð1 ÿ pþf ðv 0Þþpf ð0þþ: ð2þ A positive value of q raises support for the electorate if and only if P#(0). 0or ÿp#ð0þ pð0þð1 þ pð0þþ ðfðv pf ð0þ 0ÞÿFðÿv 0 ÞÞ. v# 1 ð0þð1 ÿ sþ f ðv 0 Þþ : ð3þ ð1 ÿ pþ If we follow Grossman and Helpman (2001) and assume that j is uniformly distributed on the interval [ÿa/2, a/2], then an increase in q (from zero) increases theshareofsupportfortheincumbentifandonlyifðÿp#ð0þv 0 Þ=ðpð0Þð1 þ pð0þþþ is greater than ðð1 ÿ sþv# 1 ð0þþ=2ð1 ÿ pþ: This condition gives the basic logic of the Curleyeffect. Theeffect occurswhenthe impact ofpolicies on the shape ofthe electorate (i.e. ÿp#ð0þ) is large, when ethnic preferences (i.e., v 0 ) are important, and when the waste involved in redistribution (i.e., ð1 ÿ sþv# 1 ð0þ) is not too extreme. This generalizes directly to Proposition 1: Proposition 1. If ðÿp#ð0þþ=ð1þpð0þþ.ð1ÿsþv# 1 ð0þdðf ð0þpð0þþ=ðð1ÿpþ=pþ; then there exists a value of v 0 ; denoted by v * 0 ; where a marginal increase in q from zero has no impact on the electoral support for the incumbent. For values of v 0 above v * 0 ; the incumbent strictly prefers redistribution, and for values of v 0 below v * 0 ; he chooses q ¼ 0. (a) If we write v 1 ðxþ ¼~v 1 ðxþ+mx; then an increase in m raises v * 0 : (b) If # 0; then v * 0 falls as s rises. (c) If we write pðqþ ¼~pðqÞÿp 0 q; then v * 0 falls as p 0 rises. More generally, v * 0 rises with any parameter that increases the value of p#ð0þ (i.e., brings it closer to zero) falls with any variable that decreases the value of p#ð0þ; as long as these parameters do not change ^p: (d) The value of v * 0 rises with p. Proof. For all proofs see the appendix. The condition ðÿp#ð0þþ=ð1þpð0þþ.ð1ÿsþv# 1 ð0þdðf ð0þpð0þþ=ðð1ÿpþ=pþþ is necessary to ensure that at some value of v 0 ; the gains from shaping the electorate dominate the social costs of redistribution. This condition is likely to hold when government policies influence the electorate (i.e., p#ð0þ is large in absolute value), the social and electoral costs of redistribution ð1ÿsþv# 1 ð0þ are small, and the probability of facing a challenger from another group is high. Proposition 1 makes several of the key points of the paper. The incumbent pursues more redistribution if more people vote along group lines (base proposition), if past choices have little direct effect on voters preferences (part a), if redistribution entails less waste (part b), and if redistribution has a greater

6 6 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V21 N1 effect on the shape of the electorate (part c). Leaders are less likely to engage in costly redistribution toward their group when their opponent is more likely to come from their own group (part d). A key feature of our model, which distinguishes it from much of the public choice literature, is that leaders derive utility from holding office (they want reelection), but not from governing a richer area. Much of the public choice literature (Brennan and Buchanan, 1980; Olson, 1993) assumes the reverse: leaders care mostly about the size of the government they run, which can be bigger in a richer community. In practice, politicians often care about both the wealth of their community and the probability of reelection and this concern mitigates the Curley effect. 3 In this situation, incumbents will try to enrich the community while also shaping the electorate. In the urban context, this might mean that they try to create jobs for nonresidents, who expand the tax base without being able to vote. 3. Application to City Politics and Emigration Suppose for concreteness that the leader is a mayor of a city, that his own group is the Irish, and that the other group is the English (or alternatively have Irish or English ancestors). Clark (1975) shows that patronage and ethnically targeted spending are particularly important in U.S. cities with large Irish populations. After the mayor chooses the value of q, both English and Irish voters can move in or out of the city. Over a long enough time horizon, voters move so that their utility levels in the city are equal to their utility levels outside the city. We denote the reservation utility of the Irish as U I ðn I Þ and the reservation utility of the English as U E ðn E Þ; where N I is the number of Irish voters and N E is the number of English voters. We assume that U# I ðn I Þ. 0 and U# E ðn E Þ. 0: These assumptions say that the supply of residents of a given ethnicity is upward sloping: the more Irish voters live in Boston, the more the marginal Irish newcomer must be paid to live in the city. The final element of the model is the labor market. In our model, the workers and the voters are the same. We assume an aggregate constant returns to scale production function f ðn I ; N E Þ: The wage is then equal to ðn I ; N E I Þ¼W I ðn I ; N E Þ for the Irish, and ðn I ; N E E Þ¼W E ðn E ; N I Þ 3. A natural question is which institutions might mitigate the Curley effect. Generally the anti populist institutions, which give disproportionate weight to property owners, would work in that direction. These include unlimited campaign contributions, checks on policies coming from less populist branches of government, policies decided by wider electorates (as in the case of the Massachusetts-wide anti-rent-control referendum), but also term limits that reduce the relatively long-run benefits of out-migration to the incumbent. Of course, many of these institutions entail social costs as well.

7 The Curley Effect 7 for the English. The constant returns to scale assumption means that wages for both groups are determined entirely by the ratio of the English to the Irish, which we have denoted by p: We can then write the wages as W I ðpþ; where W# I ðpþ$0; and W E ðpþ; where W# E ðpþ # 0: The wage of each group is assumed to be decreasing in its number, that is, labor demand curves slope down. We also assume that a positive number of voters from each group always live in the city. For any value of q, the spatial equilibrium is determined by the two equalities W I ðpþþspq ¼ U I ðn I Þ; and ð4þ W E ðpþÿq ¼ U E ðpn I Þ: ð5þ We are interested in comparative statics around an equilibrium with no redistribution, so we let ^p and ^N I (and ^N E ¼ ^p ^N I ) solve W I ð^pþ ¼U I ð ^N I Þ and W E ð^pþ ¼U E ð^p ^N I Þ: This is the same definition of ^p as we had before. Differentiation of Equations (4) and (5) leads us to our first ¼ sp 2 U# E ðn E ÞþU# I ðn I Þ ; and ð6þ U# I ðn I ÞðW# E ðpþÿn I U# E ðn E ÞÞ ÿ pu# E ðn E ÞðW# I ¼ W# I ðpþþsq þ spw# E ðpþÿspn I U# E ðn E Þ U# I ðn I ÞðW# E ðpþÿn I U# E ðn E ÞÞ ÿ pu# E ðn E ÞðW# I ðpþþsqþ : ð7þ In both Equations (6) and (7), the denominator is the same, and it is negative. There are two parts of the denominator. The first part is the effect of an increase in p on the utility of the marginal Englishman (which is unambiguously negative), multiplied by the slope of the supply curve of the Irish. The second part is the slope of the supply curve of English (times p) times the impact of an increase in p on the utility of the marginal Irishman, which is unambiguously positive. Thus the overall denominator is negative. The numerator in Equation (6) is the sum of the slopes of the supply curves of both groups. These terms are positive, so Equation (6) is negative and the proportion of the English in the electorate falls as the tax rate on them increases. The numerator in Equation (7) cannot be easily signed. There are two positive and two negative terms in it. The first two terms in the numerator are positive: the slope of the Irish wages with respect to the share of English and sq. Because the denominator is negative, these terms represent the negative effect that the transfers can have on the Irish utility. The first term reflects the negative effect of the English mobility on Irish wages; the second term reflects the negative impact of the English exodus on the tax base. The last two terms in the numerator of Equation (7) are both negative. Because the denominator is negative, they both reflect the basic positive effect that redistribution to the Irish has on the Irish utility. Differentiating Equation (6) leads to the next proposition. Recall that v * 0 is the level of the intrinsic ethnic preference for the incumbent above which he

8 8 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V21 N1 wants to redistribute and below which he does not. Thus an increase in v * 0 means a lower likelihood of redistribution. Proposition 2. The value of v * 0 falls as s rises. (a) If we write W I ðpþ ¼ ~W I ðpþ+x I ðp ÿ ^pþ; then v * 0 is rising with x I: (b) If we write W E ðpþ ¼ ~W E ðpþÿx E ðp ÿ ^pþ; then v * 0 is rising with x E: (c) If we write U E ðn E Þ¼ ~U E ðn E Þ+l E ðn E ÿ ^N E Þ; then v * 0 is rising with l E if and only if pw# I ðpþ+n I U# I ðn I Þ. ÿ sp 2 W# E ðpþ: (d) If we write U I ðn I Þ¼ ~U I ðn I Þ+l I ðn I ÿ ^N I Þ; then v * 0 is rising with l I if and only if spðn I U# E ðn E ÞÿW# E ðpþþ. W# I ðpþ: The comparative static on s has already been discussed. As redistribution becomes more wasteful, leaders indeed do less of it (near q ¼ 0). At higher levels of q, this result becomes less clear, because lower values of s have the attractive aspect of further repelling the members of the opposing group. Parts (a) and (b) show that higher wage elasticities make redistribution less attractive to the leader. Intuitively, higher wage elasticities mean that redistribution changes wages rather than the voting composition. Since the attractive aspect of redistribution to the leader is its impact on who stays and votes, redistribution that only impacts wages is less desirable. The intuition on the reservation utility comparative statics in parts (c) and (d) is more complex. Higher values of l E and l I would seem to make the population less mobile, making redistribution less attractive. There is, however, a countervailing force. One of the factors that keeps the Irish from moving in is that the English are moving out, thereby reducing the Irish wage. If pw# I ðpþþn I U# I ðn I Þ, ÿ sp 2 W# E ðpþ; then higher l E and the relative immobility of the English mean that the Irish move in relatively more aggressively in response to higher redistribution. Likewise, when spðn I U# E ðn E ÞÿW# E ðpþþ, W# I ðpþ; the Irish immobility makes the English more mobile. Equation (7) is positive as long as N E U# E ðn E ÞÿpW# E ðpþ. q þ W# I ðpþ=s: If redistribution causes the number of Irish to rise, then the average welfare of the Irish in the city must also rise because U# I ðn I Þ. 0: We can now determine whether redistribution helps or hurts the Irish voters of the city. This leads to Proposition 3: Proposition 3. When q ¼ 0, there exists a value of s; denoted by s*; which equals W# I ðpþ=ðn E U# E ðn E ÞÿpW# E ðpþþ; at which higher redistribution neither hurts nor harms the Irish. (a) For s. s * ; the Irish are helped by incremental redistribution; for s, s * ; the Irish are hurt by it. (b) If we write W I ðpþ ¼ ~W I ðpþ+x I ðp ÿ ^pþ; then s* is rising with x I :

9 The Curley Effect 9 (c) If we write W E ðpþ ¼ ~W E ðpþÿx E ðp ÿ ^pþ; then s* is falling with x E : (d) If we write U E ðn E Þ¼ ~U E ðn E Þ+l E ðn E ÿ ^N E Þ; then s * is falling with l E : Proposition 3 shows, first, that redistribution can actually harm the Irish. This can occur because the English and Irish are complements in production. When taxes drive the English out, they can make the Irish worse off. The first, unsurprising, comparative static tells us that this negative effect of taxes is more likely to occur when it entails greater social losses (s is lower). But even when redistribution entails no waste, it can still hurt the Irish because W# I ðpþ=ðn E U# E ðn E ÞÿpW# E ðpþþ can be greater than one. Proposition 3 also shows that the welfare reduction of the favored group is more likely to come about when the decrease in the number of English has a stronger negative effect on Irish wages. In addition, the mobility of the English (captured by a low value of l E ) also makes redistribution more detrimental to the Irish (because more of the English leave). Finally, a greater elasiticity of the English wage actually leads to smaller losses for the Irish. The reason is that a change in the proportion of the English has a large positive effect on English wages, which stems their own out-migration. 4. Historical Evidence on the Curley Effect In this section we review the cases of two American mayors and one of an African president who practiced Curleyism. Their policies and rhetoric led to emigration and other outcomes consistent with the predictions of the model James Michael Curley In the case of Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, the dominant political factors appear to have been his own longevity, the mobility of voters, and Curley s own ethnic appeal. Since policies do not impact migration instantly, longevity is vital, and Curley s political longevity was almost unique. Since the Curley effect for cities operates primarily through migration, massive suburbanization taking place in Boston in the first half of the 20th century, predominantly by Curley s Anglo-Saxon opponents, is central to understanding Curleyism. Finally, as the model makes clear, the incumbent politician must have an innate advantage in appealing to the members of his own group, and Curley was nothing short of remarkable in his ethnic Irish appeal. James Michael Curley s electoral career spanned 55 years between his first election to the Boston Common Council in 1900 and his final defeat for the mayoralty in Curley was first elected as mayor of Boston in He lost his 1917 run for reelection, but was reelected three more times over the next 40 years, in 1921, 1929, and He lost elections for mayor in 1917, 1937, 1940, 1949, and Curley was also elected governor of Massachusetts in 1934, and was defeated for that office in 1924 and He served as a congressman during and Curley s access to opportunities to shape the electorate through politics is almost unprecedented.

10 10 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V21 N1 Over this time period, the composition of Boston s population shifted dramatically. In 1900, Boston was still in part a Yankee city: Curley lost in 1917 to Andrew Peters, a Brahmin candidate. During the early 20th century, however, many Bostonians migrated to the suburbs, such as Brookline and Newton, powered by the streetcar and then the automobile. Boston s small geographic boundaries made this exodus particularly easy. By 1950, the Brahmins had departed. As noted by contemporary observers, the Yankees have girt their garments well about them, snatched up their skirts, that so much as a hem might not be defiled by contact with Ôforeigners,Õ and have betaken them elsewhere in a spirit little and shallow, if not mean and snobbish (Gamm, 1999:25). The last Brahmin mayor of the city was elected in 1925 (when Curley was precluded by statute from running again). There could be no Curley effect without Curley s ethnic appeal. In part, Curley s ethnic politics had its roots in the long-standing battles between the English and the Irish. The English discriminated against the Irish, and the Irish resented this discrimination. Curley also came from a poor neighborhood and represented the average Irishman, not the Lace Curtain Irish identifying with the first Irish mayor of Boston Hugh O Brien and future President John F. Kennedy. Curley s roots in the city s Irish community gave him a natural identity, and electoral appeal. His large family (seven children), his faithful religious observance (every week at Our Lady of Lourdes), and his home in the Irish area of Jamaica Plain all reinforced his ethnic identity. According to O Connor, He may have cultivated a rich and mellifluous speaking voice, but none of his followers scrubwomen, teamsters, dockworkers, streetcar conductors, policemen, firemen, housewives doubted for a minute that ÔJimÕ was still Ôone of us.õ Jack Beatty begins his biography of Curley by describing the 100,000 overwhelmingly Irish mourners attending Curley s wake. According to Beatty, For the Irish-Americans among them, especially, he was a political and cultural hero, an axial figure in their annals. How did Curleyism work? What were the policies that favored the Irish and hurt the English Bostonians, and so encouraged their emigration? There are three main areas where Curley seems to have practiced ethnic favoritism: the distribution of public goods and patronage, financial transfers, and perhaps as importantly, his rhetoric. On the first day of his first administration, Curley announced what may have been his boldest scheme for massive redistribution from Protestant Boston to his Irish supporters: his plan to sell the Boston Garden and use the proceeds to build parks in the neighborhoods of the city. This proposal sent Yankees into fits of apoplexy (O Connor, 1995:187). It was shelved, but was eventually followed by decades of favoritism in the allocation of public buildings: While Curley built playgrounds in Dorchester and Roxbury [Irish wards], he let Scollay Square become a place where ugly tattoo parlors and sleazy burlesque houses blighted the historic landscape. While he planned extensive bathhouses in South Boston, the docks and piers along Atlantic Avenue rotted on the pilings. While he laid out miles of paved sidewalks in

11 The Curley Effect 11 Charlestown and East Boston, the cobblestones of Beacon Hill fell apart and the old lampposts came tumbling down (O Connor, 1995:206). In his first administration, Curley cited as his greatest accomplishments the beginnings of an $11 million expansion of the Boston City Hospital and of the Strandway, a beach-lined motor parkway set along the Dorchester Bay side of the South Boston peninsula. These were vast projects that not only employed hundreds, if not thousands, of Curley supporters but also delivered public services disproportionately to Curley s Irish base: Curley produced numerous social, medical and recreational facilities for his low-income supporters in the neighborhoods that fringed the downtown area. Such projects would continue throughout his terms. Curley s building was one means of redistributing from the English to the Irish, but he also engaged in more direct financial transfers. Curley s preferred form of redistribution was public employment (generally at above-market wages), not welfare, and he made sure that this public employment went overwhelmingly to his Irish (and other ethnic) supporters, not to his Protestant enemies. In his autobiography, he details a reform (Protestant) member of the city council who offered to be city treasurer and to donate the bulk of his salary to a charity of Curley s choosing. Curley told him that he would only get the job if he could find in the city records a single instance wherein any Irish Catholic ever received a city appointment to any position higher than policeman until Hugh O Brien was elected Mayor in In Curley s first year as mayor, he raised spending considerably and raised the salaries of lower-paid workers. Curley cut the pay of the higher officers of the police and fire departments, but approved raises for police patrolmen and privates. He cut the salaries of school doctors, but not of school custodians (Beatty, 1992:138). Patronage and public projects were the tangible tools of redistribution in Boston. Still, Curley s unending rhetorical war on the Anglo-Saxons, his histrionic ethnic baiting, may have been the hallmark of his mayoralty. Curley accused the English of having a temperament inclined toward political chicanery and hypocricy, and railed against the inhumane numb-skulduggery of the Yankee overlords. The day of the Puritan has passed, the Anglo-Saxon is a joke, a newer and better America is here, he said, and the New England of the Puritans and the Boston of rum, codfish and slaves are as dead as Julius Caeser (O Connor, 1995:188). Instead, he favored a Boston filled with a virile, intelligent, God-fearing, patriotic people like the Irish. Such rhetoric should perhaps be viewed not only as evidence of intent to favor one s own community, but also as a form of redistribution, given its likely impact on both Irish and English voters. Boston did not thrive during the Curley era. Between 1910 and 1950 it had the lowest populationgrowthrateofanycityintheunitedstateswithapopulationof more than 300,000 in Boston s population rose by only 19.5% in this period, compared to 39.3% for Massachusetts, and 63.9% for the United States as awhole.therelativewealth ofthecityalsofell.wereboston sirishhurtaswell?

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